The invention relates generally to power-driven conveyors and more particularly to roller conveyors made by outfitting a standard power-driven roller conveyor with an array of smaller-diameter article-supporting rollers driven by the roller conveyor.
Roller conveyors are commonly used, especially in the package handling industry, to provide a solid conveying surface for a variety of materials. Typical roller conveyors include a steel, galvanized, or aluminum frame with parallel side walls. A series of axially parallel cylindrical rollers is supported between the side walls. The topmost portions of the rollers lie in a conveying plane. Articles placed on the conveying plane span two or more rollers. Some roller conveyors are powered-roller conveyors having power-driven rollers. In some powered-roller conveyors, rubber or fabric belts or other rollers frictionally drive one or more of the conveying rollers to transport articles. In others, the roller itself is motorized.
But typical roller conveyors, whose rollers are about 2 in in diameter and spaced apart across gaps, are not useful in conveying articles having small footprints that do not span at least two rollers at any time.